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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 1, 2026
Once again, readable but not memorable. This is, yet another Pulitzer winning adaptation of a book that already won the Pulitzer, much like South Pacific.
This is an adaptation of James Agee’s book, which is a mostly autobiographical telling of his life growing up in Knoxville after his father dies. This play opens with a boy learning he’ll get a surprise soon ( we the audience know it’s a sibling) but his mother deems him too young to know about the birds and the bees. We learn about his father’s alcoholism and how he kicked it by swearing he would kill himself if he ever got drunk again. We get the whole family together to meet our great grandma, we learn dad is the favorite child, dad gets called down to grandpa’s house cause grandpa is sick, we learn dad dies on the drive back home and we’re unaware if it’s a true accident or suicide, as in he got drunk and made true on his promise. We end by little boy being told about his sibling (and encouraged to ask sex questions?) I guess officially ending his innocence
Once again, readable but not memorable. This won the Pulitzer the same year to kill a mockingbird did, so I know there were good things happening in the American literary scene, but this isn’t it. Vague human story, vague intrigue with the suicide plot, maybe I’m just heartless but I’ll never think about this again
This is the 37th play I’ve read in my quest to conquer the Pulitzer Prize for drama
This is an adaptation of James Agee’s book, which is a mostly autobiographical telling of his life growing up in Knoxville after his father dies. This play opens with a boy learning he’ll get a surprise soon ( we the audience know it’s a sibling) but his mother deems him too young to know about the birds and the bees. We learn about his father’s alcoholism and how he kicked it by swearing he would kill himself if he ever got drunk again. We get the whole family together to meet our great grandma, we learn dad is the favorite child, dad gets called down to grandpa’s house cause grandpa is sick, we learn dad dies on the drive back home and we’re unaware if it’s a true accident or suicide, as in he got drunk and made true on his promise. We end by little boy being told about his sibling (and encouraged to ask sex questions?) I guess officially ending his innocence
Once again, readable but not memorable. This won the Pulitzer the same year to kill a mockingbird did, so I know there were good things happening in the American literary scene, but this isn’t it. Vague human story, vague intrigue with the suicide plot, maybe I’m just heartless but I’ll never think about this again
This is the 37th play I’ve read in my quest to conquer the Pulitzer Prize for drama
April 4, 2025
A moving play, with complex family relationships that examines death, religion, alcoholism, and more as these affect the various characters.
February 25, 2013
The dramatization of the novel "A Death in the Family," by James Agee, which I just finished. An interesting adaptation. The playwright incorporates some of the sections of the novel that are outside the main time frame of the story, and of course simplifies the action so it will work on the stage. Much of Agee's beautiful, poetic language is gone, but enough remains that the basic tone of the play is similar to that of the novel.
February 6, 2020
I loved Agee's book A Death in the Family when I first read it as a teenager. The play does not disappoint. Kristi & Abby Tabby
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews